


The Threshing Floor: A Rural Painting of the Dutch School

by Mejhiren



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Apples, Autumn, Bearded!Peeta, Bible Stories, Boaz and Ruth, Book of Ruth, Dutch!Peeta, F/M, Katniss Sings, Klompen, Peeta Paints Katniss, Spanish Katniss, Thomas Hardy - Freeform, Under the Greenwood Tree, Virgin!Everlark, Wedding Night, Wessex - Freeform, farming, harvest, wheat - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-04
Updated: 2012-10-04
Packaged: 2017-11-15 14:38:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/528367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mejhiren/pseuds/Mejhiren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The story of Boaz and Ruth (Ruth 2:1-4:13), set in Thomas Hardy’s Wessex, with just a dash of Dutch!Peeta.<br/>(Subtitle shamelessly borrowed from Thomas Hardy’s "Under the Greenwood Tree." :D)</p><p>Written for the Prompts in Panem AU Week, Day 1 - Legendary Romances</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Threshing Floor: A Rural Painting of the Dutch School

**Author's Note:**

> Affectionately dedicated to bigbigbigday006 for providing the inspiration for Dutch!Peeta. :D
> 
> Minor spoiler there. ;D 

In the sunbaked sea of whitened wheat and working men and women, dressed neck to ankles in their lightest, palest cottons, one figure stands out. The girl in the red dress.

The dress is plain, made of cheap printed cotton and too tight across her small breasts, as though cut for a child, but it becomes her somehow. The sleeves are rolled up to her elbows, baring strong, dusky forearms. She wears a broad-brimmed straw hat, much-patched, to shield her face from the harshest rays of sun, but it does nothing to conceal her long black braid. Thick as rope, it hangs nearly to her waist and dangles over her shoulder as she bends to gather the stalks. He wonders how long her hair is when unbound.

Now and again she takes small sips from the water flask at her waist. She carries a foraging bag, slung across her chest, and a little knife that she uses – with great efficiency – to cut the wheat heads free of their stalks. Still, even callused hands are scratched by the sharp awns.

His workers are disappointingly efficient. Sometimes she walks ten steps or more without finding a single stalk, yet still she continues, bending diligently, sweeping her small hands carefully over the stubble. Gleaning is thankless, back-breaking work, even for someone as young and strong as she. He thinks of how her back will pain her tomorrow. How little grain her efforts will yield, even should she fill her bag.

“Who is that young woman, Abernathy?” he asks his overseer, a gruff bearded Scotsman with a proclivity for strong drink.

“Daughter of old Heavensbee’s gamekeeper, master,” the overseer answers. “Squire let the wife and daughters stay on out of affection for the late Everdeen, but once Heavensbee himself passed on, his ne’er-do-well nephew Crane sent ‘em packing. Beggin’ your pardon, master,” he adds at the slight against his betters.

He remembers this now. Wessex farms are cesspools of local gossip, particularly at harvest-time; he’s heard this story but never seen the faces it concerned. Everdeen, the gamekeeper, dead these – three years, was it? His mother had been a Spanish beauty, they said, and her blood ran strong in his slim, black-haired daughter. He wonders why Crane chose to evict the family now. It surely cost little enough to maintain their tiny cottage, tucked away as in Heavensbee's wildwood as it was. As one rumor had it, Crane wanted one of the daughters, and his wife – Miller Mason’s sharp-tongued daughter – had done the evicting herself to prevent it.

“A mite scrawny for my taste, but I bet she’s got some treasures hid under that frock,” chuckles Thom, one of the young men in the group behind him. “I might try my hand there, come suppertime.”

The young master turns and cuffs the speaker across the face; just hard enough to sting, not to bruise. He’s known for his gentleness and generosity but can be unflinchingly harsh when true discipline is required. “No one is to touch her,” he addresses the group of youths sharply. “To bother her in any way, man or woman. If I hear of it – and I _will_ – you will be dismissed with neither reference nor pay, is that clear?”

A subdued chorus of “Yes, master,” answers him. It’s an unusually strong order from the young master, but they’ve learned to trust his judgment – well above their own, even – these past three years in his service. He’s the master’s favorite son, and as strong and just and kind as his father had been in his days in the fields.

“Tell the others as well,” the young master warns. “Should they disturb the young lady in any way, their ignorance will not save them.”

His men are good in truth but lusty, and they forget themselves in the mead-soaked heat of harvest-time. He knows each of them as well as family; none would take a girl by force, but he would not see her molested in any way by their callow attempts at flirtation.

He turns back to his overseer as the men return to their tasks. “Where do they live now?” he asks.

“Above the stable at the parsonage,” the Scotsman replies. “No room in the house, but Aurelius wouldn’t leave ‘em without shelter. He can ill afford to feed ‘em in addition to his own, though, and they won’t take charity.”

“She asked for work at the house,” volunteers Bristel, a mousy girl of seventeen with untidy brown hair tucked into a headscarf. “Cook sent her down here. She’s little but strong, that one. I haven’t seen her rest for a moment since she arrived, and that was near daybreak.”

“Bid her sit with you at luncheon-time,” the young master instructs her. “I’ll arrange for her refreshment.”

 _Refreshment…_ Her water flask is small, and the blistering sun is directly overhead. She must be desperately thirsty.

He goes to the girl with his waterskin. “More water, miss?” he offers.

She straightens, lifting the brim of her hat just enough to reveal skin the color of strong milky tea and eyes like smoke, a small straight nose, and a firm, scowling mouth.

Spanish blood, indeed. He has never before been so stirred by the first glimpse of a face.

“Thank you,” she says carefully, uncapping and holding out her flask. It occurs to him, as the lip of his waterskin touches the neck of her flask, that it’s as though their mouths are touching. He blushes.

“Take luncheon when the others do,” he tells her. “The gleanings will wait a quarter-hour for you.”

He returns to his place in the field, hefting the scythe with ease, and wonders why he’s trembling.

**

She sits alone near a stook at the fringe of the field, picking at the handful of seeds and berries that she foraged on the hour-long walk to the farm this morning. She’s lived on less – even boiled leather for broth on one lean winter day – but never when working so hard, nor in such heat.

“I’ve brought you food,” says a voice above her.

She peers up, tilting the brim of her hat to see better. The noonday sun is at his back, obscuring his features and framing his large form with fierce white light.

He crouches before her and she finds herself staring at the young man who might be made of gold. The same one who brought her water a short while ago – _the young master_ , they call him. He’s bare-headed and clearly goes about so; his sweaty mop of fair hair is as thick and sun-bleached as his ripe wheat fields. His pale brows and lashes betray him; beneath his ruddy harvest tan, his skin must be very fair. She imagines in winter he’s white as milk; his thick hair a tumble of warm golden curls.

His big hands are full of food. One proffers a steaming bowl of roasted grain, splashed with milk and honey; the other a chunk of good bread and a soft sheep’s cheese. She looks from one to the other with confusion and no little surprise.

“Gleaning is relentless, back-breaking work,” he says kindly. His eyes are as clear and vibrantly blue as the hot sky above them. “You need to keep up your strength.”

She scowls at this to cover her shame. With so many in the field, she hadn’t thought he’d care about – nor indeed, notice – one small dark girl picking up the scattered stalks left behind when the sheaves were bundled.

“I did not expect to be fed,” she assures him, but the smell of the roasted grain makes her shrunken stomach growl.

“You work alongside my men and women, and you should be fed alongside them,” he says simply. “Please.”

She takes the bowl in both of her small, callused hands and eats a spoonful of its contents. The savory, nutty grain, smoothed to a porridge with the milk and sweet clover honey, makes her want to weep. It’s simple, sustaining fare, perfect for filling a worker’s stomach at harvest-time.

She continues to eat, and he shifts from his crouch to sit beside her. He’s big and warm and close; she can smell the sweat of a hot morning’s labor on him, but it’s not an unappealing odor. He stretches out his long, strong legs, and she notes with surprise that they end not in boots but strange, boat-shaped shoes. Wooden shoes, she realizes, their peaked toes painted with tiny images of wheat heads and apples and sheep.

“You do not join the women in eating,” he says after a long silence. “They did not make you welcome?”

She shakes her head. “I do not belong with them.”

He frowns but makes no reply.

When she’s finished the grain, he hands her the bread and cheese. She eyes him, frowning, but takes and eats it, far more eagerly than she intends to. The bread is hearty and full of seeds; the cheese creamy and mild, almost sweet.

After a little he silently lifts his waterskin – something glints in the movement; a tiny band of gold on the smallest finger of his right hand – and she uncaps her flask for him to refill it again. She thinks of his lips and hers touching the same water, of the strange near-kiss of the lip of his waterskin against the mouth of her flask. She blushes and fills her mouth with the crusty heel of the bread.

The food is gone and still he does not leave her, nor does he speak. She turns to contemplate his profile from beneath the safety of her hat brim: his strong jaw; thin, firm lips; nose with the hint of a childhood break over the bridge. His eyelashes are girlishly long and pale as the wheat stubble around them.

“Do not go to another’s field,” he tells her quietly, turning to look her full in the face. “You are under my protection here.”

She realizes then how foolish – and how fortunate – she has been. Clearly, other masters – men like Crane – would not care if their field men molested a strange girl during harvest. They might even lay hands on her themselves. But this golden young man… She had felt his eyes on her when he came to this part of the field, had seen him strike his worker and give an order, though the words were indistinct at her distance. She realizes now that he was telling his men to leave her alone – and enforcing the order with the strength of his arm.

“Why are you so kind to me?” she whispers.

“Because you do the work no one else would do to feed your family,” he tells her, his voice low and intense. “You take what is forgotten – discarded, left behind –” he gestures at her foraging bag, at the handful of berries and seeds pooled in her lap “–and make a feast of it. You are strong and selfless. A-And beautiful,” he adds in a rush, but still the stammer is evident.

She scoffs lightly. This field alone is full of veritable wild roses of womanhood: flush-faced Wessex beauties with masses of bright curls and full, pert breasts straining at their summer-loosened bodices. Her, beautiful? The child of a half-Spanish gamekeeper, dark as a rook and thin as a willow twig? “Thank you for the food, master,” she says in reply.

“Peeta,” he corrects her, smiling. “My friends call me Peeta.”

A strange name. “And am I your friend?” she wonders.

His smile broadens, and it’s as though the sun has shifted from the sky and now beams at her from the face of this kind, golden young man. “I hope that you will be, one day,” he says warmly. “I’m told you are Everdeen’s daughter, but I do not know your given name. How are you called?”

It’s little enough to ask, she supposes, and he’s already surrendered his own. “Katniss,” she tells him.

For a moment he looks stunned, as though she’s given him a rare and precious gift. “A beautiful name,” he says softly. “Wild and beautiful.” This time he does not stammer. “You are welcome in my field, Katniss Everdeen.” He takes her small callused hand in his much larger one, enveloping it wholly for one glorious moment. The sun beats down on their backs and shoulders, but the only warmth in that moment seems to come from his skin where it touches hers.

He releases her hand, gets up and quietly goes to join a party of his workers.

A giggling, sunburned girl with wisps of mousy brown hair peeping out of her headscarf and a boisterous blonde, all curls and curves, quickly take his place, bubbling over with curiosity and questions. Delly, the blonde calls herself, and Bristel, her companion. When the dark girl shows no interest in breaking her silence, they compensate with a story of their own.

A certain man had three sons, Bristel tells her. Janek Mellark, son of an enormously wealthy Dutchman and his Wessex bride, owns the land for two miles in every direction. His eldest son, jolly and prosperous of his own accord, travels often and trades in horseflesh. The second, clever and comely – both girls titter at this – went to London to study for the law. The youngest, steady and kind, manages his father’s lands and livestock and joins the workers in the fields.

A gentleman farmer, they call him, for he knows Wordsworth and Keats, though his hands are broad and callused. He speaks like a statesman when the occasion calls for it, and – Bristel giggles yet again – cuts as fine a figure in evening dress as in his rough work trousers and shirtsleeves.

The farm girls suddenly squeal with delight and direct the dark girl’s attention to a group not twenty paces off. She watches from beneath the brim of her hat as the young master, laughing richly, strips to the waist for a friendly wrestling match with one of his field hands. The skin of his torso –no doubt burned red by the early summer sun, if he’s as pale as she imagines – is like burnished gold. He’s solidly built and strong, with broad shoulders and a thickly muscled chest. She watches the muscles of his glistening golden back flex as he pins a man with several inches and at least two stone on him, and she wonders, blushing painfully, how it would feel to be beneath that powerful golden body, hot and slick with sweat.

He gets up again, amid hoots and cheers from the workers and a good-natured clap on the shoulder from his opponent, and looks over at her. As though he knew she was watching, or perhaps hoped that she was. She quickly lowers her eyes to the ground, ignoring both the young master’s gaze and the curious whispers of the girls beside her. Wealthy golden landowner’s sons are not for the likes of her. For her, foraging and hard work, back-breaking gleaning and a long walk home. Tonight, at least, there will be grain for her family’s table. Tomorrow, who knows?

**

He tugs his shirt back over his damp skin, still feeling her gray eyes on his back.

 _I do not belong with them._ How right – and how wrong – she was. Of course she belongs. She harvests just as his field women do, though where they bundle thick sheaves, she bends five times before retrieving a single stalk of wheat. Their work requires more strength, perhaps, but hers is raw endurance.

And yet she’s right. She doesn’t belong at all. She’s like an exotic bird; a rare jewel. A pearl without price.

He thinks of the calluses on her small dark hand, of the tiny pile of seeds and berries she intended to sustain her for a hot day in the field, of the limp, half-empty foraging bag at her side – and goes at once to Purnia, a stout red-faced woman of his father’s age, expertly bundling sheaves.

He tugs out a handful of the stalks in her arms and scatters it to the ground.

“Master!” she protests.

“We can spare it,” he says firmly. “Leave a little from every sheaf, but scattered about.”

She looks from him to the dark girl, on her feet once more and bending to scavenge the stubble with her fingers. “Yes, master,” she says.

The dark girl doesn’t notice the heavier gleanings at first. That is, she must notice, for she bends less and cuts more, but she attributes it perhaps to the lazy afternoon, to the workers’ diligence waning with the day; not their master’s own directive. He feels it when she realizes, feels her gray eyes on his back once more, and he looks over his shoulder to see her watching him across the field.

The sun creeps lower. He sets aside his scythe and calls for Delly. “Go up to the house,” he tells her. “Have Sae make up a basket of food – bread and cheese, a bottle of milk, roasted grain. A measure of meat and pudding as well, all in portions sufficient for three people.”

Delly grins knowingly. He’s never given her such an order, but it seems not to surprise her in the least. She flounces away, flicking her fat yellow curls against his cheek as she turns.

She’s been gone nearly half an hour when the dark girl stops and straightens. She lifts her hat brim, eying the horizon, then arches her back and groans. He wishes suddenly he could ease those aches, work the pain from her narrow back with his strong hands. He thinks of her back, bared to his touch, and moans at a strange echoing ache in his groin.

He’s never wanted a woman, the young master, nor had one. He’s had offers – every girl on his father’s land would’ve gladly taken him between her legs since he turned fifteen, three springs ago – but he doesn’t want that. Doesn’t want a tumble in the field. Doesn’t want _them_.

He wants eyes like smoke in a dusky face and black, black hair on the pillow opposite him in his downy bed. He wants her small hands on his bare skin and her lithe body bared for his eyes and touch. He wants her in a silk dress in the family pew on Sundays and in cotton soft as a cloud on working days. He wants to see her with a smudge of flour on her cheek, to hear her laugh. He wants her rounded with his child and cradled in his arms.

He’s caught up in this rosy dream when he realizes that she’s leaving for the day. It’s well before quitting time for his field workers, but her foraging bag is bulging with wheat heads, and she has an hour’s walk to the parsonage – and a family to feed when she gets there.

Delly has still not returned with the basket of food. He runs after the dark girl like a boy in a schoolyard. “Miss Everdeen, wait a moment,” he calls.

She stops and turns, her gray eyes wide with worry, and he panics. He has no reason to stop her; she must think he’s come to take away her grain. “You pass the orchard on the way to the parsonage,” he blurts. “Do you not?”

“Yes, master,” she says quietly. It rankles, her sudden meekness, when her entire day’s gleanings might be at stake. He wants her to scoff at him again and call him a fool; _of course_ the orchard is on the way to the parsonage.

“The apples ripened early; many are fallen already,” he tells her. “Bushels and more; they're perfect, really, but we’ll not use them for cider. Take as many as you like.”

Her eyes brighten at that. He wonders how they’ll look when he gives her Delly’s basket – if the blasted girl ever comes back. “Thank you, master,” she says.

“Peeta.” He corrects her this time.

He wants to hear it from her lips. His name in her mouth, shaped by those scowling lips. Sweetly, quietly, cross as a fishwife or breathless with passion. He waits for her to echo it.

She does not.

She glances up toward the orchard. He feels her impatience to be off.

“Will you come back for the cidering?” he asks hopefully.

“Is there aught to glean from it?” she asks. Something dances at the edge of her tone, as though she’s teasing him. He smiles, his heart bursting.

“A gallon for your help at the presses,” he suggests. “And fallen apples every day, all you can carry.”

The smallest of smiles tugs at the corners of her mouth. He wants to kiss it out of hiding. “I shall certainly consider it,” she says lightly. “Good day to you.” She turns to leave.

“Will you come back tomorrow?” he asks desperately.

She turns, thoughtful. “Will there be such…generous gleanings tomorrow?”

“And more besides,” he promises. “ _Please_ come back tomorrow, Miss Everdeen.”

Delly flounces up to them at that very moment, all bouncing curls and deeply flushed cheeks, with the basket in her hand. He knows why she’s late now. Sae’s boy, Rory, swarthy as his mother, has had his eye on Delly’s robust curves since lambing time. He suspects a fondle or more at the back of the kitchen while Sae prepared the basket.

He takes the basket from Delly and rummages swiftly through its contents. The dark girl’s eyes rivet on the basket, and he knows she knows it’s for her. He can’t give it to her like this, not in front of the field workers. He doesn’t care two pins for their gossip, but she’ll refuse it out of shame.

“Delly will accompany you to the main road to ensure no one harms you,” he decides, flashing a pointed look at the flushed blonde as he hands the basket back to her. She’s a good girl, really, just free with her favors, especially at harvest-time.

Delly nods, chastened, and the girls leave in the direction of the orchard. His chest burns as his heart goes with them.

**

The dark girl’s mother – a delicate blonde woman with Wedgewood-blue eyes and porcelain skin, ill-suited to poverty – gasps at the feast her daughter brings to their makeshift home above the parsonage stable. “So much grain – and apples besides! However did you manage it?”

“Young Master Mellark sent it,” the girl replies.

“Mellark?” her mother echoes. “You mean Peeta, Janek’s boy?”

The dark girl nods, puzzled.

“God be praised!” her mother cries, her lean face glowing with joy. “They are kin to us, Katniss! Janek’s mother and mine were cousins; hers married a Dutchman and mine the apothecary’s son. And how generous he has been already!”

The dark girl knows the young master has been generous, though she does not know why. All the apples she could carry and extra gleanings from the sheaves. She watched; his highly efficient women left whole handfuls behind when they knew she was following. He told them to do this, and then sent her home with the promise of cider and a basket of rich men’s food: cold roast beef and cake, milk and bread and cheese.

Her mother reaches into the basket of food, dipping her fingers almost reverently into the small sack of roasted grain, and gives a startled cry. She calls to her younger daughter – fair-haired like herself, not yet fifteen and comely – who is laying out chipped plates on the blanket that serves as their table. “Primrose, fetch my mending basket. I left it in the parson’s drawing room.”

The blonde girl departs and the mother turns urgently to her dark daughter. “You must go to him at once,” she says. “You dare not approach him publicly, in the sight of his workers.”

The dark girl shivers at the intensity of her mother’s words. “Why should I go to him?” she asks. “For what purpose?”

Her mother continues as though she had not spoken. “They will work late into the night and sleep in the field,” she says. “The young master will be alone, lying apart from his workers. Find the place where he sleeps, uncover his feet, and lie down at them. When he wakes, tell him who you are –”

“But he knows who I am,” she protests, catching at this flash of sense amid her mother’s mad instructions of returning to the field tonight and lying at the feet of the golden young man. Can she be serious?

“Tell him you are Violet Ebberfeld’s granddaughter,” her mother explains. “Alyssum’s child. He will know of her, if not of me. When he learns of this connection, he will surely wish to help in some way; perhaps even find us places in his household.”

There is a logic in this, though she cannot think why it must be done immediately, and in so queer a manner. “He might turn me away,” she reasons, and her voice trembles. “And then we will lose even his promise of fruit and cider.”

Her mother smiles strangely. “Why would he turn you away?” she asks, extending one finely boned hand. “He sent you his token in the grain.”

In the center of her mother’s palm lies a small gold ring – the same ring, the girl recalls, that glinted on the young master’s littlest finger when he refilled her flask the second time. It’s a plain band of fine gold, simply carved with a single word: _SCHATJE_.

“It’s Dutch,” her mother says. “ _Schatje_. It means ‘sweetheart’ or ‘darling.’”

The dark girl wonders where she lives, the Dutch girl who gave the young master this ring, and her cheeks burn with jealousy. “How do you know that?” she chokes.

“Because this ring was bought for me,” her mother answers sadly.

The dark girl gapes at her mother, uncomprehending.

“Janek Mellark loved me, but I chose your father,” she explains. “But these are words for another time. The boy wore this ring in the field?”

Her daughter nods wordlessly.

“Then Janek has given it to him; he would not wear it elsewise for hard labor. And now he gives it to you,” she says, “as a pledge of his goodwill and…” She hesitates. “And perhaps more besides,” she adds with a small, hopeful smile. “But come: you must bathe. I will dress your hair like a queen’s, and the parson’s boy will drive you to the farm.”

The dark girl bathes in cold water from the pump, and her mother brushes out her long black hair before rebraiding it into a heavy coronet around her head. She dabs her daughter’s pulse points with sweet rosewater, then thinks better of it and gives her the bottle to take along.

The women have very little clothing remaining between the three of them and none of it fine, but they agree at last on a long-sleeved dress of dark orange cotton, printed with oak leaves and acorns. It’s hardly a handsome piece and hopelessly out of fashion, but it fits the dark girl well and echoes the harvest in which she labored.

The dark girl trades their last penny for a wagon ride to the Mellarks’ farm. It’s full dark, nearing midnight, when she arrives at the edge of the wheat field. The waxing moon above gives light enough to see by, and all about are the sounds of revelry: drinking, slurred cheers, and soft grunts from behind the stooks, not all of which can be snoring. She wonders if her mother is wrong; if there will be a bare-breasted girl with a sunburned face bouncing atop the young master when she finds him.

But no. He lies alone at the far edge of the field, in the very spot where she’d settled for her noontime rest; where he’d sat beside her in companionable silence as she ate his gifts of roasted grain and bread and cheese. He is curled on his side, wrapped in a coarse blanket, his head pillowed on his arm like a child. His pale hair gleams bright in the moonlight, but she identifies him by his shoes, set neatly to one side. The gaily painted wooden shoes of a Dutch farmer’s son. She smiles at the thought and dips behind one of three tall oaks bordering the field.

She knew better than to cross a field at night while dressed finely, let alone with drunken company so near, and in the dark, she strips away the rough clothing of her father’s that she wore in the wagon and tugs on her mother’s dress. She nervously dabs more of her mother’s rosewater at her wrists and throat and goes to the sleeping young master.

 _Why is he alone?_ she wonders. He’s beautiful and strong, but gentle – _so_ gentle and kind. Few masters object to lying with their field women, especially at harvest-time, and his are robust and lovely.

She remembers her mother’s instructions and kneels in the stubble to uncover his feet. They’re large but well-shaped; beautiful, even. Paler than his sun-kissed back and shoulders. She aches to cup them in her hands.

Her mother would have her lie in the dark and await his attention. The common girls would solicit it by reaching a hand between his legs – down the front of his trousers, even. She does none of this.

She brings both hands to her intricately braided coronet and unplaits it, quick and clumsily, then finger-combs her damp hair till it hangs loose to her waist. Then she cups his right ankle in both hands and bends to kiss his foot.

When he does not at once stir, she continues, not in fear but in pleasure, tracing the contour of his foot with soft, tender kisses. Her lips are just brushing the bone of his ankle when he wakes with a quiet gasp. “Who is that?” he says. “Who is there?” His voice is ragged with sleep and perhaps fear as well.

“A girl to whom you were kind, master,” she answers, releasing his ankle and raising her face. “And who has come to beg a further kindness of you.”

He sits up with a start at the sound of her voice and gasps again at the sight of her kneeling at his feet. “Miss Everdeen,” he whispers, his bright eyes wide in the darkness. “Are you a dream?”

“No – I am Violet Ebberfeld’s granddaughter,” she says in a rush. “Child of her daughter, Alyssum.” Now that he is awake, the plan – and the actions she has taken toward it – mortify her. Coming to his field at midnight? Waking him with kisses to his foot? But she’s come this far; she can hardly stop now. “Your grandmother and mine were cousins, master,” she explains. “My mother hopes that you will…” She chokes on the words, her cheeks burning, and stares down at her hands. “She hopes you will honor our family connection and look after your cousins in their poverty.”

She waits in dread for his scoff, his laughter, but instead he leans forward to raise her chin with one hand, gently forcing her to meet his eyes. “I will do that and more besides,” he vows, “Cousin or no. But is there no other relative, one who might also wish to take on the care of your family? Kin of your father, perhaps, who might have…” He clears his throat. “A prior claim?”

She cannot think what he means by _a prior claim_ , but she has another relative, to be sure. “There is a cousin, master; son of my father’s sister. He serves Mr. Crane as gamekeeper now that my father is dead and my family evicted. He –”

She wants to turn away from him in shame, but his hand is still cradling her chin, so instead she lowers her eyes and forces out the words: “Now and again, when he thinks they can be spared, he will poach his own partridge and pheasant to feed my family.”

The young master releases her chin, and the loss of his warm fingers against her skin feels like a rejection. She looks up at him, expecting fury or disgust at this confession, but his face is merely somber and maybe a little sad.

“Are you promised to him?” he asks quietly. “To this cousin?”

Such a question surprises her, though she imagines he needs to know of her marital prospects if he means to look after her. “I am promised to no one, master,” she says, and for the first time in her life, she is ashamed by it. “Who would have a gamekeeper’s daughter? A scrawny girl with Spanish blood?”

“I would,” he whispers.

She stares at him in disbelief across the breathless darkness. The pulse in her head is deafening.

“You mislike my charity,” he says quietly. “Would you better accept such gifts if they came from your husband?”

She trembles, from fear and confusion and perhaps, on some level, longing for the foolish picture this young man paints with his words. A dream of his enormous stone house, of fresh bread and cheese and chickens in the stewpot. Of soft beds and feather pillows and the golden young master lying beside her.

“Marry me, Miss Everdeen,” he says, and she knows it is neither a lie nor a dream, for this is the third time he’s spoken the intent, and in such words that she cannot fail to comprehend. “Neither you nor your family will go hungry again.”

He is in earnest. This is quite possibly what her mother had hoped for when she sent her here tonight: a marriage to ensure their care and well-being. It’s an incomparable offer – the handsome son of a wealthy man – but she doesn’t want it, not like this. Not as a bargain, as a contract, with her family’s survival in the balance. “I should prefer to work, I think,” she says plainly. “I would rather earn a wage in your house or fields than take the charity you’d owe a wife.”

“Owe?” he says, stunned by her rebuff. “I’d give it freely, whatever you wished.”

“Then _I_ would owe _you_ ,” she says, exasperated at his lack of understanding. “I owe you far too much already.”

Before he can reply, she slides the gold band from her left thumb and holds it out to him. “You dropped this in the grain,” she says.

He smiles, and it’s the same broad smile as when she’d asked if she was his friend that afternoon; the smile that contained the sun and reflected it only on her. It’s even more dazzling by moonlight. “I knew you’d come back to me, if only to return the ring,” he says, though he does not take it from her. “But that wasn’t the only reason I sent it.”

“Why, then?” she puzzles.

He leans forward to take both her hands in his. “I want you for my wife, Miss Everdeen,” he says.

This proposal, for its lack of fine words, is different. Determined. “You don’t know me at all,” she whispers.

“I know a little,” he reminds her, smiling softly. “I know that you are stubborn, strong, and selfless – and incomparably beautiful.” The word leaves his lips like a sigh this time, and she realizes she will never tire of hearing it. She cannot see herself as beautiful, but it’s enough that he believes it. Perhaps it’s true because he believes it.

“I know that your hair is a curtain of night and your eyes are smoke,” he goes on, his words resonant with an emotion she can’t quite identify. His thumb presses the ring she still holds against her palm. “I know I will never again see and long for a woman as I long for you.”

He brings a hand to her face and closes his eyes in bliss as his callused fingertips touch her cheek. She leans into the warmth of his palm and he groans. “The rest will come, Katniss,” he promises, opening his eyes to gaze into hers, and she shivers at the caress that is her name on his tongue. “Be my wife," he bids, so gently. "Let me feed and clothe you – you and your mother and sister. Let me soften the calluses of your hands and heart.”

These words strike the final blow to her resistance, but he has one last promise to make. “I will not touch you until you want me to,” he swears. “ _Never_ touch you, if you don’t want me to.”

“Then yes,” she says breathlessly, for to such an offer, she has no objection. “Yes, I will marry you.”

He takes the ring that still lies in her palm and solemnly slips it back onto her thumb, then he raises her callused hands to his lips and peppers them with quick, ecstatic kisses from wrist to fingertip. He laughs aloud with delight, and the sun is in his laughter as well. “You cannot leave now,” he says at last. “Have you money for a wagon home?”

“My last penny brought me to you,” she admits.

“And well spent, my love,” he assures her. He smiles at the words. “ _My love_. It feels good, and right.”

“It does,” she agrees with a tiny answering smile.

“Lie beside me?” he offers. “I will share the cover, and you can leave before the workers rouse for the day.”

He turns back the rough blanket that covers him and inches to the edge of the blanket on which he lies, then extends an arm to pillow her head. She gathers her long hair over one shoulder and stretches out beside him, and he covers them both with the blanket. Beneath the coarse wool, his body is warm as a stove. They lie face to face, not speaking, and he gently strokes her hair. The wheat stubble, upon which their bed is made, is sharp and pokes her through the blanket, but she has never been more comfortable in all her life.

She presses a hand to his heart and feels it racing. Curious, she inches down a little and replaces her hand with her cheek. He tangles his fingers in her hair, cradling her face against his chest, and groans. “I lied to say the rest would come,” he confesses, and his voice trembles more than at any of his words of marriage. “It is here already. I love you, Katniss,” he whispers. “From the moment I saw you in my field.”

“I love you, Peeta.” She whispers the words against his heart and feels it skip a beat. “Ever since you came to me with the waterskin.”

He tugs her back up to him and presses a hot kiss to her brow. “Marry me soon?” he pleads.

She laughs, rubbing at the ridiculous happy tears in her eyes. “I’d marry you tonight if you had the license,” she teases.

He groans again. “Thank heaven I do not!” he says. “We must do it properly – by the banns, when harvest is done.”

“When harvest is done,” she agrees, venturing a hand to his sun-bleached curls, and she dares to say it again: “Peeta.” She kisses his chin – the nearest she can come to his cheek as they lie face to face – and, moving as one, he enfolds her in his arms and she fits herself against him, tucking her face into the hollow of his neck and curling her lean arms about his waist. He smells of sweat and wheat straw and sunbaked earth. Her fierce heart fills to overflowing.

**

He opens his eyes just before dawn, and the vision in his bedroll takes his breath away. Katniss Everdeen, the dark girl he saw and met and loved, all in one day, is wrapped in his arms – and he in hers. Her endless black hair lies between them like a tangled skein of silk. She smells of soap and roses and wheat straw…and of him.

She wears a dark orange dress; plain printed cotton, like the red dress she wore in the field, but the material seems spun from the very fabric of autumn. From wheat and apples and pumpkins and honey – and sunset. His favorite color – or rather, blend of colors – in all the world. He’ll paint this moment for her the moment the harvest is done.

Katniss doesn’t know that he paints. He wonders if it will impress her.

She shifts a little, perhaps feeling him wake, and blinks endearingly short, sooty lashes as she opens her smoky gray eyes. They light on his face, and his entire being aches at the contentment in them. “I woke to find the sunset in my arms,” he breathes.

“And I the sunrise,” she whispers back. She brings a hand to his hair, threading her fingers through his curls.

He bends his head a little under the gentle pressure of her fingers as she leans up and their lips meet, almost by accident. It’s a clumsy kiss – his first and, he hopes, hers as well – fragile and breathless and perfect. They both draw back a little, startled, and then both move for each other at once. Her nose hits his cheekbone hard and his nose narrowly misses her eye – a profound failure after such a fine start – and then they’re laughing and taking it in turns to kiss every part of each other’s face. Temples, eyelids, nose, cheeks, chin, and every now and again, catching at each other’s lips. She moves onto her back to make it easier for him, and he wants to weep as his lips brush over the sweet contours of her face, teasing the corners of her mouth with tiny kisses until they curl up in the smile he craves so badly.

He’s balanced just above her, his thigh over her hip, when he realizes that his body wants more – _so_ much more – from this position than either of them is prepared for – nor, indeed, may ever be prepared for. So he pulls away and lies on his back, catching her by the waist and tugging her up to lie across his chest.

His chin and cheeks are covered with pale blonde stubble, not unlike the wheat field around them, and she savors the feel of it against her face, nuzzling her cheek against his as though she’s never felt anything so wonderful in her life. He silently swears off shaving, at least until after their wedding. He can grow a proper beard in three weeks, he imagines. He’ll be bearded for their wedding night and rub his cheek against every inch of her skin.

He thinks of his face between her bare breasts and moans.

She moves off him quickly. “Was I hurting you?” she asks.

“On the contrary: you feel _too_ good,” he tells her, stroking her cheek with his fingertips. “And I have much to do this day if we’re to wed in three weeks.”

He sits up and offers a hand to help her; she follows suit, only to wince audibly and reach a hand to the small of her back. A full day of gleaning, compounded by a night’s sleep on hard ground, will have left her body stiff and sore. He’s startled at how keenly her pain hurts him; as though it is his own. “May I?” he asks gently, resting a hand at the nape of her neck.

She makes a noncommittal sound in reply, and he knows the pain is bad or she would’ve protested. “I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he murmurs, shifting behind her to bring both hands to her back. He sweeps the curtain of her long black hair over one shoulder then slowly, carefully, deeply, he manipulates the sore muscles with his strong fingers. She melts into his touch with a groan.

He wishes he could lay her down on the blanket – he could better reach the small, tender muscles of her lower back were she lying on her stomach – but her groan of relief is sufficient trial to his resistance. He’s unaccustomed to the wanting, to the physical discomfort of this kind of arousal. He wonders how he’ll bear it for three weeks.

He presses a quick, daring kiss to the nape of her neck before combing her hair back into place with his fingers. He takes his time at it, relishing the feel, and wonders if she notices. “Go to the house and show my ring to the housekeeper,” he tells her. “She will make arrangements to send you home. Tell your mother I will call on her today, no later than noon. I must first speak to my father,” he explains, “and then to your cousin.”

“To Gale?” She frowns. “How should this concern him?”

“If we are to publish the banns, I want no impediment,” he says simply.

She smiles unexpectedly, gloriously, and it knocks the breath from his body. “You _do_ mean to publish the banns?” she asks, almost in disbelief. The banns, after all, are a working man’s marriage license, not a master’s. In truth, they could be married quickly and quietly with very little effort on his part. But that’s not what he wants.

“I want to marry you as a common man,” he says. “With banns in our parish church and every last gossip discussing it over tea with her neighbor. Unless you wish otherwise?”

She shakes her head and looks like she might cry with happiness. “You want the entire parish to know you’re marrying me?” she whispers.

“I want _everyone_ to know I’m marrying you,” he says with a grin, and kisses her before he can think twice about it.

Still wrapped in his arms, she reaches curiously for one of his strange wooden shoes and slips it over her small booted foot. It’s far too large; she could nearly fit both of her feet inside.

He laughs. “Best get used to them, my love,” he murmurs against her temple. “Your first gift from me is meant to be a pair of your own.”

She gapes at him in horror and he laughs even harder. “They’re more comfortable than they look,” he promises. “We grew up in them, and so will our children.”

 _Our children._ He regrets the words as soon as they’re spoken – had he not promised never to touch her if she didn’t want him to? – but her resulting expression is thoughtful, not angry. “Our children,” she muses.

His heart skips a little at the thought of this strong, stunning girl as his wife. Of coupling with this girl in the soft darkness of his bedroom. Of her slim body swelling to accommodate his child.

He kisses her once more, tenderly, and helps her to her feet.

**

The dark girl makes her way to the large stone farmhouse, astonished by how much she misses the young master after one brief night in his arms. It’s as though she’s lost a limb, or something even more vital.

She longs for the feel of his body, warm and solid with muscle, enfolding hers or – for that elusive, exquisite moment – resting atop hers. For the sweet, soothing pressure of his strong hands against her back, easing the tenderness from her muscles. For the brush of his lips on her eyelids and the clumsy breathless kisses they traded; for the friction of his whiskers against her cheek and lips.

But keener than these pleasures she craves the smell of wheat straw and sweat and sun-dried cotton and, beneath all of it, that indescribable note that is simply _him_. Peeta. _Her_ Peeta.

She raises an arm to her face and inhales deeply. The fabric of her sleeve holds a delicious whisper of his scent, and her eyes burn as she tries to breathe in as much of him as possible. She wonders how she will last three weeks without his body near hers. She wonders if she returns to help with the wheat harvest and cidering, if he will steal moments to be with her.

Her knock is answered by a painfully correct woman with a crisp cap of perfect ginger curls; the housekeeper, she hopes, as she lifts the hand bearing the young master’s ring and asks for a wagon to take her to the parsonage. The woman promptly goes into a fit of strong hysterics and flies off to another room, shrieking about “a gypsy girl at the door with young master’s ring!”

The dark girl, left on the doorstep, has nearly made up her mind to walk home when the woman returns with a large blond man following close behind. His clothes are simple but well made, and he looks so like the young master – albeit taller and somehow even broader of shoulder, with deep laugh lines around his eyes and mouth and splashes of silver in his thick golden hair – that the dark girl’s heart aches with renewed longing. She imagines this is what the young master will look like in twenty years or so. It is not an unpleasant thought.

The man – the master himself, she realizes, Janek Mellark – gives a cry of joy at the sight of the dark girl and sweeps her up in an embrace, lifting her over the threshold into his house. “Lyssa's daughter!” he exclaims as he sets her down again. “Lyssa’s daughter with Lyssa’s ring! But how has this come to pass?”

She tells him the story from the beginning: how Squire Heavensbee let them remain in the gamekeeper’s cottage after her father’s death and after the squire himself died, Mistress Crane threw them out. How Parson Aurelius took them in, but there was no proper lodging to be had and little food to go around, so she had resorted to foraging and even accepting poached game from her cousin to feed her family.

At this the master stops her. “Forgive me; I didn’t think. Trinket,” he calls to the ginger-curled woman, whose correct face has grown increasingly aghast at each new thread of the dark girl’s tale. “Have another place set at the table. Miss Everdeen will eat with me.”

Over the richest, most magnificent breakfast she’s ever eaten – hearty rashers of bacon, heaps of eggs, porridge, and all the bread she can stomach – the dark girl explains how she came to the master’s kitchen the following morning, hoping to find work, and the cook sent her to the field to glean behind the workers. She tells of the young master’s unexpected kindness, of his orders for her protection and feeding, of the bounty of food he sent home with her. She tells of the ring in the grain and of her mother’s instructions and finally, amidst many blushes, of the night in the field, of proposals and promises and halting words of love.

The master listens to every word with neither interruption nor mocking, and when she has finished both her tale and the meal he takes her small dark hand and kisses it. “My son could not help but love you,” he says. “No more can I. He promised to send you home; I shall do that and better. Trinket!” he calls again.

The correct woman hurries into the dining room, clearly anticipating some new horror from their strange guest, though her features have been schooled into a decorous mask. “Send Boggs to me,” the master tells her, “and see to the laying out of three bedrooms for female guests.”

She departs with a shriek of dismay and the master turns to the dark girl once more. “My man Boggs will take the wagon and drive you to the parsonage,” he explains. “I would take you myself, but I imagine my son will want words with me this morning.” He smiles, not the sun-bearing smile of the young master but startlingly near to it. “Collect your mother and sister and all of your possessions and return here at once.”

She gapes at him, certain she’s misheard.

“If you wish it,” he adds gently. “I should like nothing more in all the world than to share my home with your family.”

“But…before the wedding?” she puzzles. “But…I am not…you have no reason – “

“I have every reason,” he corrects her, smiling. “Until the wedding, you are kin – cousins of my late mother – and will be looked after as such. Your mother was right to appeal to this connection. And after the wedding…” He touches her cheek with a fingertip. “You will be my daughter," he says softly, "and as much a part of this household as any of my sons.”

The dark girl is overcome. Never has she known such kindness. Never had she expected it. Not an hour ago she had hoped to see the young master for a few moments in the field or at cidering, and now she is to live under the same roof as him? She thinks of his summer-sky eyes; his thick, soft hair; the warmth of his skin against hers.

“Thank you,” she whispers. “I wish it, above all things.”

**

The young master whistles as he rolls up his bedding, but his body aches for the dark girl. For her small strong body in his arms. For her face pressed against his neck, her warm breath on his skin, her fingers brushing his scalp. For her long, long black hair, loosed for his pleasure. For the unbroken bliss on her face as they traded kisses and caresses. For the smell of clean skin, damp hair, and roses. For the unexpected kisses she pressed to his foot to waken him. He had thought those a dream for certain and could have wept with joy to find it otherwise.

He goes to find his overseer, accompanied by bleary but curious smiles from the workers rising – more often than not, in pairs – from their own bedrolls, scattered across the field, as he passes. Abernathy, of course, he finds alone, but for his ever-present flagon. It’s said he lost his girl when he was younger than the young master is now, and the only woman to stir any sort of response in him these days is the housekeeper, Trinket. _A damned infuriating woman_ , he calls her, though he delights in offending her sensibilities at every opportunity.

He’s awake and moving slowly, clearly missing the coffee to stir into his morning liquor, and the young master greets him with what he imagines will be a simple question: “Haymitch, why is everyone smiling at me this morning?”

The Scotsman guffaws and tosses down his bedroll. “Why are they smiling, master?” he snorts. “Because for three years, no girl could turn your head! None of your neighbors’ daughters, not Delly at harvest-time – not even Viscount Undersee’s girl when she rode across your field in her petticoat at Midsummer! You couldn’t be bothered to leave your painting for a peek!” he bellows, aghast. “And then a Spanish gamekeeper’s slip of a daughter walks into your field and you fall all over yourself!”

The young master blushes, but the overseer has scarcely begun. “You tell the women to leave extra grain – full handfuls of it! – for her to collect,” he says. “You send Delly to fetch her a hamper of food. You strip down to wrestle poor Mitchell – he’s all blubber and guts, that one, but you thought it’d impress her because he’s got weight on you!”

The young master blushes darker still, guilty as charged, and the overseer barrels on, “You practically followed her home, master; do you suppose anyone missed that? They’re _smiling_ ,” he mutters, leaning in, “because it’s about damned time you fell for a skirt. They’re wondering why you’re still here.”

The young master grins. “As to that,” he says cheerfully, “I’m on my way home. I’ve only come to tell you I’ll not be in the field today; I’ve calls to make.”

The overseer gives a mighty huff of relief. “Thank heaven for that!” he says. “Well, call on her mother, your father, the parson – whoever the devil you need. I have a feeling you’ll be useless until this girl is your wife.”

The young master does not contradict this. He’s fairly certain the overseer is right.

He hurries home – hoping, though he knows better, that she might still be there when he arrives – and is greeted by his delighted father, who embraces and kisses him soundly as they exchange accounts of the morning. “She has my approval and my love,” his father assures him, “though she looked for neither. Make what calls you must, and know she will be here when you return.”

His girl, living under his roof. Not three weeks hence, but _today._

There is no time to waste.

The young master bathes and dresses with careful haste, donning his finest brown coat, dark blue waistcoat, and crisp fawn trousers then – with a smile at the thought of the dark girl’s expression – he trades his _klompen_ for a pair of riding boots. He combs the tangles from his curls but does not shave. He will be bearded for his wedding day. For his slim, dark wife.

For a rich man’s son, the young master is rarely so clean, nor so finely turned out. When not at work in the fields or the orchard or the sheepfold, his strong hands are smudged with paint or dusted with flour. His Dutch grandfather had insisted upon progeny who knew their way around a kitchen, and the young master, much to his brothers’ amusement, demonstrated a fine skill for breads and baking.

The hearty, seeded bread he gave the dark girl in the field was his own. Once she is here he will make her all the bread she desires – _whatever_ she desires, prepared and served by his own hands.

Sae’s boy saddles the young master’s gelding, and he departs for Crane’s estate. Seneca is a vain young man, prone to gambling, whose only good fortune lies in being the eldest nephew of a wealthy bachelor. He and his barb-tongued wife keep an expensive household, but it’s not them the young master rides to see.

He directs his horse past the grand house to the broad stretch of wildwood that comprises over half of the estate, finally arriving at the tiny stone gamekeeper’s cottage set back among the trees. He realizes this is where his love grew up; indeed, where she lived till a short while ago. He wonders if he might actually have seen her before she came to his field. Squire Heavensbee was a good friend of both his father and grandfather, and it was not uncommon for their workers to mingle at village fêtes.

His knock is answered, and promptly, by a lean young man, so like the dark girl – _his_ girl – that he could be her brother. The very same dusky skin and gray eyes, though his black hair is short and sleek as a pelt and his strong chin is dusted with a youth’s growth of beard. He wears a comfortable patchwork of sturdy tweeds and worn leathers.

He calls himself Hawthorne, this gamekeeper, and he invites the young master inside to learn his business. The cottage is little bigger than a burrow but snugly built; the young master is forced to duck his head more than once to clear a beam, and he wonders how the gamekeeper – standing half a head taller – can cope in such a space. It smells of pipe tobacco, woodsmoke, and roasted game, and the young master imagines that his girl had been happy here – leastways, until her father died.

They sit at the fire with strong coffee and black bread, and the young master explains his strange visit. “I am kin to the Everdeens, through their mother’s mother,” he says. “I understand their situation to be grave, requiring the intercession of a benefactor. You are closer kin than I, so if any are to have the privilege, it ought first be offered to you.”

The gamekeeper considers this, nodding a little. “I look after them as best I can,” he tells the young master. “My income is scarcely sufficient for the keeping of myself and my own mother, but I have found…other methods of supplying them.”

The poached game, of course. The gamekeeper does not speak this aloud, but they exchange a look of understanding.

“I can do little more,” the gamekeeper says, “though I might wish it.”

The young master hesitates. Obligated as he is by honor, he wishes more than anything that he need not ask what he knows he must. “If you married the elder Miss Everdeen,” he says carefully, “would you not be in a better position to care for the family?”

The gamekeeper scowls. “T’was Mistress Crane who sent them off, suspecting her husband had taken an interest there. If I were to marry Katniss, I’d most likely lose my position.”

The young master forces the words out: “And…do you care for her? For…Miss Everdeen?”

“Like a sister,” the gamekeeper tells him. “Though I would wed her willingly, no matter the consequence, if it was the only way to help her family.”

The young master’s heart sinks, for whatever his girl told him in the night, here is an honorable man, and close kin besides, who would sacrifice all for her well-being.

To his surprise, the gamekeeper gives a sudden bark of laughter. “But what is this? _You_ want to marry Katniss!” he cries. “Is that why you have come?”

The young master blushes at the gamekeeper’s frankness. “It is.”

“Then it’s her you should be asking, or her mother,” the other man says. “Not me. Though I am kin, I have neither authority in the matter of her marriage nor a claim to her hand. Only tell me,” he says, keenly now, “do you love her?”

“Like my right arm,” the young master breathes. “Like my very soul.”

The gamekeeper grins broadly. “Then marry her with my blessing, master,” he says. “It’s worth little enough, but you seem to desire it.”

The young men shake hands, one large and fair and bronzed, the other slender and dark as heartwood. “Will you come to our wedding?” the young master asks, his joy now uncontained. “I’ll ensure Crane grants you a holiday for it.”

“I should be honored, cousin,” the gamekeeper replies.

**

The dark girl and her family arrive at the farm in good time, having had little to pack that was truly their own, and have scarce descended from the wagon when the master himself bursts out of the broad stone house to welcome them.

“ _Schatje_!” he cries delightedly. He seizes the dark girl’s delicate mother in his strong arms and swings her around, then sets her back on her feet and soundly kisses her on both cheeks.

“Janni,” she murmurs back, a little breathlessly, her porcelain face crimson. For the first time it occurs to the dark girl that these two were once lovers of some degree, and both are now widowed.

The master heartily embraces the dark girl and her sister as well and brings them inside to become acquainted with their new home. The ginger-curled housekeeper, having witnessed the master’s affectionate display outside, makes a great show of fighting heart palpitations as the master introduces the Everdeen women and instructs her as to their treatment.

Each of them, he says – the mother and sister as much as the young master’s betrothed – is to be respected as though she is mistress of this house, and they are assigned a housemaid to attend them: a tiny brown-skinned girl named Rue, who bobs perfect curtseys to each and addresses the mother as “Mrs. Everdeen,” the sister as “Miss Primrose,” and the dark girl as “young mistress.”

They are about to commence their tour of the house when the young master returns, and the dark girl’s heart skips a beat at the sight of him. Gone is the field worker in his plain cotton and whimsical wooden shoes, covered with the dust of the field and the sweat of his labors. This polished stranger with clean, tousled curls wears a gentleman’s clothes: a finely cut brown jacket, blue waistcoat, starched shirt and trousers, and boots; glossy black boots, such as rich men wear for riding.

This is not the golden youth who held her through the night and kissed her in the field at sunrise. This is a gentleman’s son, wealthy and beautiful and far, far too good for her.

He sees her then and his handsome face floods with joy. He pushes past his father and her mother without hesitation or apology and catches her up in his arms, pressing eager kisses to every inch of her face. “You’re here,” he sighs against her temple.

Somewhere, her sister giggles. The housekeeper gives a cry of dismay

“Is this real?” she whispers, cupping his face in her small dark hands. His cheeks are rough with stubble beneath her palms, and her eyes burn with foolish, happy tears.

“You tell me,” he whispers back. His breath smells of bitter coffee and black bread – gamekeeper’s fare.

“Did Gale have objections?” she murmurs.

He grins. “None whatsoever.”

He kisses her lips, over and over again, and turns to publicly ask her mother for her hand in marriage.

**  
She lies that night upon a featherbed, her head cradled on goose down pillows and lace-trimmed sheets tucked up to her chin, and she aches. She doesn’t want this soft bed and sweet, stuffy warmth. She wants fresh air, wheat stubble, a coarse blanket, and the young master’s body.

She leaves her room without a second thought and follows the dark corridor to the door the tiny maid indicated earlier as leading to the young master’s bedchamber. The door is unlocked, and she slips inside like a shadow.

The room smells of him – the comforting scent of his body – coupled with a crisp burst of night air. The young master sleeps with his windows open. She wonders if he too misses the field, and the rude bed they shared. If he misses _her._

She unplaits and finger-combs her long black hair – she knows, however tangled it might become in the night, the young master loves it loose – and sets the ribbon on his nightstand. Then she turns back the covers and settles behind him in the darkness, winding her arms about his waist and pressing her face between his shoulder blades. Beneath the thin cotton of his nightshirt, his skin is gloriously warm.

She falls asleep almost at once.

**  
He wakes to the warm weight of a body at his back and imagines for a moment that it’s one of the sheepdogs. It’s neither unlikely nor uncommon for them to come inside on cool nights and nose their way into a room, seeking a bed to share.

Sheepdogs, however, do not have small, callused hands, as are curled about his waist. He takes one and brings the palm to his lips, tugging her even closer. Her small breasts press against his back and he sighs, half longing and half contentment. “I missed you too,” he whispers.

And then, because he can bear it no longer, he turns in her arms to gaze at her: his girl, in his bed. Her lush black hair drapes her like a cloak, and her smoky eyes are enormous in the darkness. In her heavy white nightgown, she looks like an angel.

“Can I stay?” she whispers, uncertain.

It’s wholly unacceptable, what she asks, and he knows she knows it. For an unmarried man and woman – betrothed or otherwise – to share a bed, however innocently; even his indulgent father would disapprove. But their love was born in the dark of night, in a coarse bed shared for warmth and comfort. He wants her in his arms – in his bed – more than life itself.

He inches down to press his forehead to hers. “Always,” he murmurs.

**  
For a man accustomed to rising before dawn, the young master is in no way inclined to leave his bed the next morning, nor to send his girl from it, and so Rue finds them together when she brings up his daily cup of chocolate. A girl of few words even at the merriest of times, the little housemaid gives them a small, secret smile and returns a few minutes later with a plate of toast and a second cup.

They curl together, loverlike, the dark girl taking rapturous sips of the sweet, creamy liquid and eating bites of toast that the young master dips in his own cup and feeds to her. When the toast and chocolate are gone they trade kisses – fleeting and delicate, though the young master aches to taste his bread on her tongue. She confesses shyly to never having kissed anyone before and he says the same, blushing but delighted at their shared innocence. There’s a certain possessive pride at her revelation as well. _His_ girl. No one else has kissed her, and no one ever will.

“When do you want to be married?” he asks, stroking her dusky cheek in wonder.

“As soon as we can,” she answers, turning her head to kiss his palm.

He writes to his brothers and tells them to be home two weeks from Sunday.

**  
The young master’s eldest brother, Marko by name, promptly sends his congratulations along with the promise of a handsome wedding present for his new sister-in-law, to be delivered upon his arrival. Luka, the middle brother, sends his own well-wishes with an enormous parcel of London silk – a warm shade of cream, almost yellow in hue, patterned with rich golden wheat heads.

The village dressmaker, one Madame Portia, goes into spasms of delight at the yards and yards of fine material and begs to create a true London wedding gown, all flounces and bustles and whalebone, but the dark girl refuses. She wants a simple dress, cut like the ones she wears in the young master’s field. A dress she might move freely – even dance – in.

The young master, who accompanied his bride-to-be on the errand, supports her wholeheartedly in this decision, and the dressmaker is forced to concede, though she bemoans the unused yards of fabric that will be left over from such a meager design. “Make my husband a waistcoat of it, then,” the dark girl tells her.

The young master looks at her as though she’s just given him the moon. She realizes it’s the first time she’s referred to him as her husband.

**  
He hears her sing for the first time at church that Sunday.

It’s a breathtaking sound, warm and clear and sweet, amidst the robust but surprisingly tuneful bellowing of his farmhands. He wonders if it’s merely the euphoria of hearing Parson Aurelius read the banns – _I publish the Banns of Marriage between Peeta Mellark and Katniss Everdeen, both of this Parish_ – or of sitting beside her in his family’s pew, their fingers interwoven against the polished wood.

It’s as though one of the carved angels framing the sanctuary has suddenly raised its voice in song.

He realizes then that he has heard this voice before, countless times, and never known where it came from. As a child of five he’d believed it _was_ one of the sanctuary angels and had stood mute through every hymn, watching their carved lips to see which of them was singing. As he grew older and more daring he peered around the nave, seeking the source of that sweet, stirring sound, certain he would see a shimmering angelic presence, perhaps hidden among the quire. When he reached his teenage years, he determined that there must be something in the structure of the church, some unique resonance that caused an ordinary voice to sound so heavenly. Always, though, he hoped otherwise.

Today, his hopes were proven beyond his wildest dreams.

He can hardly breathe around her after that. She notices his silence and looks at him, curious, but he says nothing till that afternoon, when he takes her out to the orchard. “I-I heard you sing in church today,” he stammers.

“What’s so remarkable about that?” she teases. “Everyone sings in church.”

He realizes that she has no idea of the beauty of her voice; of the effect it can have. “When you sing, the very angels hold their breath in awe,” he whispers.

She laughs, no doubt thinking it a lover’s flattery, but he begs her to sing again; anything at all.

She shakes her head, still laughing, and wanders ahead among the apple trees, singing one of the harvest hymns from the service that morning.

_Bright robes of gold the fields adorn,_   
_The hills with joy are ringing,_   
_The valleys stand so thick with corn_   
_That even they are singing._

Her voice is like sweet water, like apples and honey and wild roses, and he thinks his soul will shatter from the sheer beauty of it. He’s never heard her apart from the congregation, never isolated that bright seam of gold from the rough but solid rock of the rest of the parish. It’s more than mortal ears can bear. He weeps.

She turns back at the third stanza, still smiling, and sees him standing a little ways behind her, his cheeks wet with tears. She stops singing at once and comes to him, taking his face in her small hands. “Peeta, you’re crying,” she says gently. “What is it? Have I done something wrong?”

He shakes his head. “I have heard you all my life,” he rasps. “Since I was five years old. A voice, clear and pure as an angel’s, among all the others in church.”

“My father,” she says weakly, and he can tell his praise both startles and frightens her. “My father had a beautiful voice. It was him that you heard.”

“Perhaps,” he concedes, raising a hand to touch her lips. “But your father has been gone some time now, and still I hear that voice.”

He looks about him then, not at a sound, but at the absence of one. The entire orchard is hushed and breathless, as though even the birds have ceased their songs to listen to his girl. He knows not whether to kiss her senseless or fall on his knees before her.

They end up beneath a tree with his head in her lap and her fingers combing ceaselessly through his curls as she sings every song that she knows. Folk songs, lullabies, love ballads, even hymns. “Another,” he begs each time she finishes a song. “ _Please,_ Katniss.”

Every now and again he tugs her head down for a kiss. Her thick braid brushes his chest, even when she sits up; he toys with the end till his hands itch for more, then he slowly unplaits it. Her unbound black hair spills across his chest and he buries his face in it with a moan of pleasure.

She’s given him something rare and precious this day. His head in her lap, her caresses, her kisses, and running through it all, the pure sweet current of her voice, ebbing and flowing around him. He carves their initials in the bark of the tree under which they tarried and silently resolves to bring her back to this very place in spring, when the orchard is fragrant in flower. Resolves to lie beneath this tree with her, to make a bed of apple blossoms and make love to her there.

**  
He quickly learns that his betrothed has no intention of embracing the leisure of a rich farmer’s wife. She rises before dawn – before _him_ , many days – and presents herself to Abernathy for duties, more often than not waking the overseer from a drunken stupor.

She crosses the farm like a little bantam rooster, not proud but purposeful, her thick braid bouncing behind her. The girls whittle away at her reserve with friendly smiles and gentle teasing, and the men nod approvingly at her quiet stamina and lend their aid whenever she’s willing to accept it. Thom in particular is bashfully attentive, no doubt seeking to redeem himself for his callow words the day she first came to the field.

She works as hard as any of his paid farmhands and proves herself as strong as most of the women and young boys. Sometimes he wonders if she’s stronger than he is, this small dusky angel with her callused hands. For all of his wrestling prowess, his hard-earned brawn, she has lived without; lived on almost nothing for years while caring for others before herself. She gleans, binds, and gathers tirelessly with neither protest or complaint. He suspects, if ever she wanted, she could break him with one hand.

He learns that her father taught her to climb and fish and shoot in Heavensbee’s wildwood and lends her his fowling piece one afternoon on a whim. She returns with six rabbits, every one shot through the head, and proceeds to clean them better than his father’s cook.

He wonders how he got a wife who can hunt, and what he can possibly have to offer her.

**  
The next morning when she makes to rise, the young master tugs her back down beside him. “Don’t go,” he murmurs.

She grins. “I know Abernathy’s tired of me,” she says.

The beleaguered Scots overseer finally stormed up to the young master the day before and demanded that he take his betrothed to bed and keep her there or he – Abernathy – would not be responsible for the consequences. The dark girl had not been present for the exchange and the young master had not the nerve to tell her what was said, but witness accounts were plenteous.

“Yes, but that’s beside the point,” the young master says, grinning in reply. “I want to do something for you.”

He takes her down to the kitchen and sits her on a stool, temporarily banishing Sae and her small army of kitchen maids while he blushingly dons an apron and makes bread for his girl. His broad hands are steady and skillful as they knead first the dark, grainy dough for his hearty seed-filled bread, then a lighter – sweeter, he tells her – dough with crumbled bits of sheep cheese. “For cheese buns,” he explains, smiling. “We’ll have them for tea with butter and honey.”

She wonders how she got a husband who can bake, far better than she ever will. An unflinchingly good and generous man, with the strongest, gentlest hands she’s ever seen. A handsome, devoted man who, impossible as it is for her to comprehend, _adores_ her. She wonders daily if this – if _he_ – might be a dream, and if not, how she can ever begin to deserve him.

While the breads cool, he takes her up to a small room she’s never seen before; a room well-ventilated but still pungent with the smell of oil paints, and rightly so. The walls are covered with small, homely paintings of every corner of the farm: the orchard, the farmhouse, grazing sheep, and, of course, the wheat fields, both green and gold. A small table serves as home to paints, palette, and brushes, and amongst those are scattered over a dozen charcoal sketches of her: her hands, her eyes, the curve of her cheek, the fall of her hair; all perfectly, lovingly captured.

On the adjacent easel sits a painting of her lying in the young master’s arms in the field at sunrise. That is, it _must_ be her: there is the wheat stubble, the coarse wool blanket, her dark orange dress with its pattern of acorns and oak leaves, precise in every detail, but the girl in the painting is _beautiful_. Her gray eyes are smoky and depthless, her loose black hair sleek as silk, her dusky skin not dull but radiant.

“Is that how you see me?” she whispers.

“It’s how _everyone_ sees you,” he tells her softly. “You’re beautiful, Katniss.”

She presses her face to his shoulder and cries in his arms.

**  
The second time the banns are read, another couple is announced: _Janek Mellark and Alyssum Everdeen_.

“There seemed no reason to wait – to delay the banns,” the master tells them at luncheon, his hand curled around his intended’s and his expression joyously content. “Though we’ll not rush to wed.”

The young master nods in perfect understanding and warmly congratulates his father and stepmother-to-be. Primrose, the younger Everdeen, is delighted at the thought of gaining kind Mr. Mellark as her own father, but the dark girl presses her mother when they are alone.

“You loved my father,” she says with no little confusion. “So much that you were crippled with grief at his passing.”

“I chose your father,” Alyssum tells her daughter quietly. “I loved them both.”

**  
The dark girl’s _klompen_ finally arrive one week before the wedding.

She’s surprised – and, if she’s entirely honest, a little disappointed – to find them entirely plain; the wood unfinished, even, but she supposes the gift of shoes is merely a traditional token – nothing elaborate required – and, in any case, she’s not Dutch. The young master and his father try them on her – the strange boat-like shoes are more comfortable than she had expected – meticulously ensuring that the fit is good, then the young master whisks them away with a grin and disappears for the rest of the afternoon. She knows she’s expected to wear them on the wedding day, at least for the ceremony, and wonders why he’s not letting her practice walking in them.

She wonders wryly if the bride tripping over her own feet is a Dutch tradition as well.

**

Luka Mellark arrives three days before the wedding. Leaner than his brother – he has a scholar’s body, not a wrestler’s – the dark girl imagines he favors his late mother with his tawny fair hair and hazel-flecked eyes. A shrewd young man, well cut out for the law; he embraces and kisses each of the Everdeen women in turn and nods approval when he hears of the dark girl’s use of her bridal silk.

Marko arrives the following day, and a man less like Luka she can scarce imagine. Brawnier than the young master, with shoulders even broader than their father’s, he has thick, white-blonde curls and a round, florid face. His wedding gift is a handsome brown pony, the perfect mount for a farmer’s daughter-in-law, particularly one as small and slight as the dark girl.

At tea that afternoon, the housekeeper leans over the dark girl’s shoulder to advise, none too quietly, “I should leave off riding till after the wedding, young mistress.”

Luka makes a choked sound and the young master shoots him a look. The dark girl frowns in confusion.

“Young master will want his due,” the housekeeper tells her sternly.

At this both Marko and Luka burst out laughing and the young master turns crimson. The dark girl understands now, a little. It’s to do with her lying with the young master.

She thinks of the promise that accompanied his proposal of marriage: _I will not touch you until you want me to._ Never _touch you, if you don’t want me to._ She wonders if he’s changed his mind; if he means to couple with her on their wedding night. She wonders if she wants him to.

They haven’t spoken of it since the night they shared his bed in the field, though they’ve kissed surely a hundred times since and spent every night in each other’s arms. They kissed at winnowing, laughing as her small fingers dusted the chaff from his beard. They kissed in the orchard, under the apple tree where he carved their initials the Sunday of their first banns, and at the cidering he slipped his tongue into her mouth for the first time – just a little, tentatively exploring. Startled, she gasped against his mouth and then, equally cautious, touched her tongue to his. It was a breathless, euphoric feeling, and they’ve tried it a few times since. She finds it easier, somehow, than ordinary kissing; it seems less coordinated, less difficult to get wrong. She likes being that close to him; likes _tasting_ him, though she’d never admit it out loud. She likes the husky, guttural sounds he makes when her tongue brushes his.

They never kiss at night, simply hold each other and sleep. They kiss in the morning before they rise; a shy brush of lips, leading to a deeper, hungrier exchange, his arms enfolding her tightly. Sometimes she wants his body over hers, and he’ll oblige for a minute or two but always pulls away to lie on his side before she’s had quite _enough_. Enough of his heat, his weight, the strange hardness against her belly that makes him blush and at once soothes and ignites her.

She isn’t sure what _enough_ is, but she suspects she’ll only find it if she lies with him as a wife with her husband. She thinks of his broad golden body, naked over hers, and shivers.

**  
The banns are read for the third and final time. The requisite silence follows for declarations of impediment, and before Parson Aurelius can introduce the subsequent Gospel reading, the tiny parish church erupts in whoops of joy. The young master squeezes the dark girl’s hand against the wood of the pew and grins like a fool.

They both know better than to share his bed that night.

“Tomorrow,” he promises, kissing her forehead as they stand outside her bedroom door. “After tomorrow, you’ll never again be apart from me. Unless you wish it,” he adds quickly.

She tugs his head down and kisses his lips.

**  
She wakes the next morning to a light knock on her bedroom door and gets up to find her _klompen_ waiting outside – and such _klompen_! Pale golden wood, painted with wild roses, apples, and tiny, perfect honeybees - painted by her husband. She kisses the peaked toes and breathes a thank-you toward his bedroom door.

 _Their_ bedroom door, tonight.

They marry unfashionably at midday on a Monday, in a church filled with wealthy neighbors and farmhands alike. The dark girl’s long hair is braided into an elaborate crown of black silk with wheat heads woven into the plaits, the perfect counterpart to her simple dress of wheat-patterned silk. To her amazement, she neither stumbles nor hobbles in her beautiful _klompen_.

The young master, golden and bearded, wears his fine brown coat and a waistcoat matching her gown. He weeps at his vows, sliding the small gold band with its Dutch inscription onto her left thumb.

**  
They hold the wedding feast in the field nearest the farmhouse.

Fiddles and pipes and concertinas are brought out and the young master and young mistress dance almost without ceasing. The young master is heavy-footed, but years of wrestling his brothers and a few brave field hands have taught his limbs coordination and the ability to mirror another’s movements. The young mistress dances like a flame.

After the dancing – and a good deal of cider and mead – the workers sing boisterously, and none too figuratively, of ploughing fields, of deep hidden valleys, of rams and goats, of mounting and riding.

The young mistress blushes furiously. The young master does too.

“Not until you want,” he whispers against her ear. “ _Never_ , if you don’t want.”

Young mistress’s cousin, Crane’s gamekeeper, ends the round of bawdy ballads by begging her to give them a song. She agrees with a laugh and sings her father’s favorite, a lilting Welsh air called “The Ash Grove.”

Her voice is clear and shimmering as starlight, and she ends the song to rapt silence. Not a chuckle, not a hiccough, not a single night bird dares to break the spell. Even wildly drunk Abernathy stares at her with tears in his eyes.

The young master falls in love with her all over again.

**  
Delly and Bristel, both flush-faced and giddy with drink, plead to accompany the young mistress upstairs, to help her undress and prepare for her husband, but she refuses them firmly and goes to the young master’s bedroom alone.

She pulls the wheat heads from her hair then unplaits the elaborate braids and smooths the resulting tangles with the comb on the young master’s washstand. She carefully removes her wedding dress, shift, and stockings and lies naked in the young master’s bed.

She’s never lain here without him before, and certainly never naked. The soft sheets smell of him, of the sun and bread and sweet hay. She tugs the quilt over her body and waits.

He comes to her a few minutes later, fully dressed and smiling nervously, and turns back the quilt. As though it were any other night and they were coming together simply for sleep and warmth in each other’s company. Perhaps that’s what he expects.

He gasps at the sight of her body, lean and bare between the sheets. “ _Katniss…_ ” he breathes.

She wonders, trembling, if this is the first time it’s occurred to him that she wants him to have her, body and soul. She has no words to tell him, nor would she trust her tongue to speak them if she did.

He sits carefully beside her, licking his lips, and brings a hand to one breast. His fingers, turned gold by the harvest sun, are pale against the dusky curve and brown nipple, and she sucks in her breath at their touch.

“They’re small,” she whispers.

“They’re perfect,” he whispers back.

His callused thumb gently brushes across the peak and she closes her eyes, arching up a little into the caress. She feels the warmth of his breath on her skin a half second before his lips brush her nipple.

She opens her eyes with a sharp, ragged cry.

He lifts his head at once, his eyes apologetic. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs. “Do you want me to stop?”

She shakes her head. “I want you to make love to me,” she whispers.

He leaps off the bed and immediately begins tugging at his clothes, but he’s clumsy with eagerness and shaking with innocence, and he can barely manage the buttons of his waistcoat. He reaches for her hand and brings her small fingers to the front of his shirt. “Help me?” he pleads with a crooked smile, and they fumble the rest of his clothes off together.

He’s bigger still beneath his clothes, more golden and warm and glorious than she ever could have imagined. She laughs at the pale skin of his belly and thighs and trembles a little at the thick shaft jutting from the thatch of dark blond curls between them.

His gaze follows hers to his groin. “Not until you want,” he rasps, and she knows it’s taking his last ounce of willpower to say it. “ _Never_ , if you don’t want.”

She lies back against the pillows and spreads her legs for her golden husband. He moans at the sight and scrambles atop her. The hard thing that pressed against her belly all those mornings in his bed now pulses, hot and insistent, between her thighs.

They both know what happens at this point – at least, the immediate mechanics of it – but it’s too sudden, too soon, and so instead he kisses her, again and again and again. Soft virgin’s kisses to start, slowly blossoming into parted lips and tentative, then fevered, brushing of tongues.

Without warning he lifts his head, breaking the kiss, and moves down to take one small dark breast into his mouth. She doesn’t know what he’s doing or why, and then he begins to suck; like a babe, and nothing like. His mouth is wet, hot, and fiercely hungry as it tugs at her breast. It feels _amazing._

Something buckles deep inside her at the sensation; she feels slick and heavy between her legs. “Yes,” she whimpers, and she buries her fingers in his soft hair, holding his face against her.

He brings a hand to her other breast and begins stroking, kneading, squeezing with his strong, callused fingers. If this is what happens between a man and his wife, she wants more – _oh,_ so _much more_ of it. She covers his roaming hand with hers and finds herself guiding the movement, the pressure that she wants.

Just when she thinks she can bear no more, he lifts his head and changes sides, sucking on the breast his fingers had devoured and stroking the one he’d sucked. She doesn’t know which is more exquisite, the relief of his mouth enclosing the breast he’d pleasured with his hand or his calluses tracing the nipple made sensitive, damp and erect, by his mouth.

“Now,” she chokes suddenly. “Peeta…do it now.”

He raises his head and his bright eyes are half-closed, almost drowsy with passion. “Are you sure?” he pants.

She nods.

There’s an awkward moment of aligning, of his hand and hers between their bodies, guiding the tip of him to the place where she feels slick and heavy, then he carefully pushes into her, and even with his gentleness, it feels so big and hard and _foreign_ that she gasps and grips his shoulders. She wonders how this can be right – surely that part of him will never fit inside her – when, with a whispered apology, he breaks through, swift and sharp, to fill her completely. They both cry out at the sensation.

He stills above her, his belly flush with hers, and waits, pressing soothing, gentle kisses all over her face. His lips catch the tears of pain beading at the corners of her eyes and she laughs brokenly at his sweetness.

Slowly, he begins to move and it’s awful at first; the pushing and pulling, the thick hardness of him moving deeply, rhythmically in and out of her at that place where she’s so very small, but she kisses him – his lips, his brow, his temple, mostly, as he bears down over her – and after a full minute or two of this she feels herself easing around him.

He whimpers and begins to push faster in response, and the friction of him sliding in and out of her starts to feel _good_. Strangely good, in a flushed, breathless, almost uncomfortable sort of way. She feels him swell and tremor inside her.

“Katniss!” he moans loudly. “ _Schatje!_ ”

He bursts inside her with a warm spurt of liquid – _so_ deep, surely at her womb – and collapses over her, his golden body hot and heavy and slick with sweat.

She wonders if this is how it feels for the field at planting time. The sharp, invasive stroke of the plough piercing virgin soil; the steady, almost pleasurable friction of the blade digging its furrow; and finally the wet burst of seed, filling the fertile hollow.

She feels sore and sticky and utterly magnificent.

“ _Schatje_?” she whispers, smiling, against his damp forehead.

“ _Mijn schatje_ ,” he murmurs, nuzzling her breast.

**  
His wife, predictable as the little rooster she so reminds him of, wakes at sunrise the following day. They’re meant to go downstairs, to give every member of the farm and household staff a measure of roasted grain and baked sweets on the morn of their first day as man and wife. It’s a Mellark wedding tradition - one he despises at this particular moment.

She slips from his arms as she rises from the bed, nimble and nude, and goes to retrieve her shift and wedding dress. He stares appreciatively for a long moment, for in the course of their lovemaking he’d had precious little time simply to  _look_ at her, then he leans over the edge of the bed to reach his discarded wedding shirt and toss it to her.

She raises a brow but slides the garment over her head. A generous fit on him; it hangs to her knees. “Shall I simply add a belt and stockings?” she teases, turning about for his admiration.

He catches her knees in his big hands and tugs her playfully back onto the bed, and she yelps in surprise then squirms as his hands slide down to her ankles, spreading her legs wide. He languidly scales the inner side of one lean, dusky leg with his lips, tucking up the hem of his shirt when it gets in the way, and finds that he doesn’t want to stop at her thigh. He doesn’t know what to do, or even if he should; he nuzzles experimentally at the patch of black curls between her legs and she gasps.

“No?” he whispers, looking up to meet her eyes.

“ _Yes,_ ” she pleads, though she looks as lost as he.

He fumbles carefully between her legs, not certain what to touch or how, and she tries to guide his fingers, quickly growing flushed with frustration and arousal. Together they find the tiny sweet pearl at the center of her that melts the muscles in her legs and he circles it with a gentle fingertip, enraptured by its effects. A feather-light brush makes her writhe and arch and grow deliciously slick beneath his fingers.

With a groan almost of pain, he dips his head between her thighs and makes love to her with his mouth. She grips his hair by the roots and presses up against him, weeping with pleasure at the careful strokes of his tongue and the gentle suckling of his lips.

**  
The workers, many of them still in a potent cider-induced fog, wait patiently outside the house, placing increasingly ribald, if good-natured, bets. A veritable fortune changed hands at midnight when the young master called for hot water – to bathe the virgin’s blood from his wife’s thighs, of course. More than a few believed she’d come to him deflowered, and still others assumed that she’d lost her maidenhead to the young master on one of the fortnight of eves she’d lain in his bed. Little Rue had never said a word and the young mistress had been discreet about leaving the young master’s room – indeed, none but Rue had ever seen her there – but a single breakfast tray bearing two cups of chocolate was more than sufficient to spark rumors.

The workers are expecting their traditional grain and sweets, but they’re in no hurry this morning. Every now and again they hear a moan or whimper from upstairs; pleasured sounds, both male and female, and even the pious among them smile a little, secretly, at the wedded bliss their good young master is, at last, so clearly enjoying.

After all, if the young master likes to sleep with the windows open, who are they to complain?

**  
The young master’s sun-bleached hair grows gold again in winter’s darkness, and his summer tan fades to a pale, rosy cream. He paints his dark wife by firelight, clothed and otherwise, and makes her bread from his father’s grain.

By springtime her belly is round and full as a ewe’s, though her limbs are lean and supple from the hard farm work she insists on sharing in as often as possible. He takes her to the orchard, and the perfumed air from the thousands of blossoms is dizzying. He lays out a familiar blanket of coarse wool, scatters it with a carpet of apple blossoms, and carefully makes love to her under the tree with their initials carved in its bark.

Afterward, he rests his cheek on her belly and begs a lullaby for their child. She sings every last one she knows, stroking his soft hair as his tears spill onto her dusky skin.

She takes the last of the wheat-patterned silk from the chest in their bedroom and begins a christening gown for their daughter.


End file.
